Josh King

NEW

Author of OFF SCRIPT: An Advance Man’s Guide to White House Stagecraft, Campaign Spectacle, and Political Suicide, 2016

Co-creator and host of “Polioptics: The Theater of Politics” on SiriusXM Satellite Radio, 2011-2014

White House Director of Production for Presidential Events, 1993-1997

As a world-traveling "advance man," an operative who orchestrates TV- and photo-ready moments involving important political figures, Josh King has unique experience working with the reputations of officeholders, candidates and other public figures, and is a leading voice on political stagecraft. His writings have appeared in POLITICO magazine, Men’s Vogue, Variety, the Washington Post and Brill’s Content. He has appeared on the BBC, CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, CNBC, National Public Radio and XM Sirius Satellite Radio. Josh’s book, a survey of what he calls "The Age of Optics” called Off Script: An Advance Man’s Guide to White House Stagecraft, Campaign Spectacle and Political Suicide(St. Martin Press, April 2016), is a serious meditation on the intersection of how candidates tell their stories and how the media covers them.

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Rave Reviews About Josh King

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Josh offers a provocative look at how hats, helmets, paddles and banners have shaped the course of our presidential elections. His Off Script stories from the ‘The Age of Optics’ reminded us that the best laid plans lead nowhere without the right message, the right team and relentless attention to detail.

Armed with a menagerie of images and videos that make people stop, think and reflect, the man who helped shape the unique brand of Bill Clinton's political stagecraft brings audiences on a multi-media guided tour through the Age of Optics, ultimately leading to the election of Donald Trump. The stop ...

Armed with a menagerie of images and videos that make people stop, think and reflect, the man who helped shape the unique brand of Bill Clinton's political stagecraft brings audiences on a multi-media guided tour through the Age of Optics, ultimately leading to the election of Donald Trump. The stops on King's tour will be immediately familiar to many: Dukakis and the tank, Bush and the supermarket scanner, the Dean Scream, "Mission Accomplished" on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. But the real stories King shares behind those moments and images, and how the media fed them to the public, help to explain why, when Donald Trump descended his escalator to launch his campaign, the clock began to tick on his ascendancy to the White House. King's talk pulls back the curtain on Campaign 2016 and lays out a road map for candidates in 2020 and beyond who aspire to the highest office in the land.

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Josh King selected for Slate’s Trumpcast team

A renowned expert on political stagecraft and the fascinating intersection between the media and politics, JOSH KING has been selected to join Slate’s popular Trumpcast podcast. Trumpcast dives into the major headlines and overriding themes of the presidency, providing humorous, insightful and engaging commentary on everything from healthcare to the Russia investigation.

JOSH KING is a mastermind at political stagecraft in "The Age of Optics." He wrote Off Script: An Advance Man’s Guide to White House Stagecraft, Campaign Spectacle and Political Suicide(St. Martin Press, April 2016), which is a serious meditation on the intersection of how candidates tell their stories and how the media covers them. On the eve of the 2016 election, King discusses how campaigns end with Brian Williams of MSNBC.

JOSH KING, former advance man to President Bill Clinton, analyzes one of George H.W. Bush's public relations blunders and how politicians can navigate misinterpretations by the press. The appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe draws from the politically enlightening content of King's latest book, Off Script: An Advance Man's Guide to White House Stagecraft, Campaign Spectacle, and Political Suicide.

Former advance man to President Bill Clinton and author of Off Script, JOSH KING unpacks political stagecraft and shares how Donald Trump is changing the game in political imaging. King's writings on political stagecraft have appeared in POLITICO magazine, Men’s Vogue, Variety, the Washington Post and Brill’s Content. He has appeared on the BBC, CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, CNBC, National Public Radio and XM Sirius Satellite Radio.

If you need a break from the media coverage of the campaign trail and would like to know what transpires behind-the-scenes, check out this great interview between POLITICO’s Todd Purdum and Josh King, author of “OFF SCRIPT: An Advance Man's Guide to White House Stagecraft, Campaign Spectacle, and Political Suicide."

On Bloomberg's With All Due Respect,JOSH KING, former White House director of production for presidential events for President Clinton, breaks down compelling scenes from some of the big events during this campaign cycle and comments on ‘The Donald’s’ hat. Josh King has unique experience working with the reputations of officeholders, candidates and other public figures, and is a leading voice on political stagecraft. Josh’s new book, Off Script: An Advance Man’s Guide to White House Stagecraft, Campaign Spectacle and Political Suicide, is a serious meditation on the intersection of how candidates tell their stories and how the media covers them.

In his fourth-grade halloween celebration in elementary school in Newton, Mass., Josh King came to class dressed as Patrick Henry. “‘Give me liberty or give me death!’ was more memorable than ‘trick or treat’,” he said.

Josh graduated from Swarthmore College in 1987 and moved to Washington, D.C. to work on the presidential campaign of the late U.S. Senator Paul Simon. He became director of scheduling and advance for Simon’s New Hampshire primary campaign because, he says, “as a New England kid, I knew the difference between Interstate 89, which led to Dartmouth, and Interstate 93, which led to Dixville Notch.” When Simon’s campaign folded, Josh joined the the Dukakis/Bentsen campaign and advanced his first political events west of the Connecticut River. He was not responsible for “Dukakis in the tank,” but he did chronicle the debacle in a 2013 article in POLITICO magazine.

After Dukakis’s defeat at the hands of George H.W. Bush, Josh moved to the Caribbean, marketing the then-nascent technology of cellular phones in Tortola, British Virgin Islands. He worked for a startup called Boatphone, which was spreading throughout the Eastern Caribbean. When Hurricane Hugo hit the island in September, 1989, he used one of the few operating phones in the BVI to give CBS Radio a first-person account of the havoc wrought by the storm. Recounting the images of uprooted palm trees blowing across crumbling roads in nearly 150-mph gusts, a CBS producer told him he didn’t have to worry about being compared to Dan Rather.

Josh returned to political stagecraft in 1991, working on the presidential campaign of Sen. Bob Kerrey then joining Governor Bill Clinton’s campaign in 1992. It was working across the U.S. in the summer and fall during Clinton’s campaign against President Bush and H. Ross Perot that tagged Josh as a big event guy with an eye for the visual. When Clinton became the 42nd President of the United States, Josh served in the White House as one of the president’s schedulers before being appointed director of production for presidential events in 1993. His unofficial tally of places visited during the Clinton Years: 48 states (sorry, Mississippi and Nebraska) and 40 countries around the world.

Josh left the White House in late 1997 to produce a pilot for Lifetime Television called West Wing that he created with writing partner Robert Wells. The pilot was shot in Toronto in 1998 starring Annbeth Gish as a Deputy White House Press Secretary and Marcia Cross as her network correspondent nemesis. Screened only by network suits, focus group participants and a few proud parents, the episode never aired, losing a testing bake-off to Any Day Now, which starred Annie Potts and Lorraine Toussant and enjoyed an 88-episode run on Lifetime from 1998 to 2002. When Aaron Sorkin’s masterful The West Wing debuted on NBC in the 1999 fall season, Lifetime’s attempted entry into Washington-based television drama quickly became a forgotten footnote. A single writing credit on NBC’s American Dreams is the lone vestige of a short-lived Hollywood career.